Health care consumption for somatic patients following a brief outreach alcohol intervention

Anne-Sophie Schwarz,Marie Kruse,Anette Søgaard Nielsen,Bent Nielsen,Jes Søgaard

doi:10.5617/njhe.6470

Abstract

This study explores health and social care consumption in two groups of patients with risk of alcohol use disorder (AUD), following a brief outreach alcohol intervention in a general hospital setting in Denmark. The Relay intervention aims to decrease health care contacts and thus primarily, in the long run, to reduce health care costs and secondarily to reduce labour market consequences and social costs for patients with alcohol problems. The study took place in somatic hospital departments with high prevalence of alcohol related injuries and illnesses. Patients admitted to the hospital between October 2013 and June 2016 were screened using the Alcohol Use Identification Test (AUDIT) and everyone scoring 8 points and above were randomised to either intervention (Relay group) or control group (TAU group). The patients (n=561) were followed for 12 months after discharge from the hospital. Data was gathered on somatic and psychiatric hospital admissions, GP visits and other primary health care visits as well as the costs associated with the health care contacts. In addition, data on social costs and productivity was gathered. All data was gathered from the Danish registers using personal identification numbers. We modelled the association using generalised linear modelling and investigated the costs further by performing a quantile analysis. We found no statistically significant difference in health care costs, social costs or productivity between the two groups. A longer follow-up is needed to fully investigate effects of the Relay intervention on changes in patients’ health behaviour and subsequently on health care costs.

Highlights

Excessive alcohol consumption is associated with health problems and social harms such as personal problems, family problems, problems at work, accidents and crimes (Rehm et al, 2009)
We modelled health care costs, social cost and productivity costs by setting up five different models where we controlled for covariates
We found a significant difference in the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test (AUDIT) scores between the two groups (p=0.001) with 39% of the Relay group having AUDIT scores of 16+ and 27% in the TAU group

Summary

Introduction

Excessive alcohol consumption is associated with health problems and social harms such as personal problems, family problems, problems at work, accidents and crimes (Rehm et al, 2009). In Denmark, the majority of the adult population consumes alcohol (The Danish Health Authority and Statens Serum Institut, 2015), and for 14 to 20 percent of the population the consumption develops to a harmful level with problems for the individual and their relatives (Gottlieb Hansen et al, 2011). Morbidity and social harms related to alcohol problems represent a major economic burden to society (Rehm et al, 2009, Roerecke and Rehm, 2013). A total of 14 percent had a harmful alcohol use and 3 percent were dependent drinkers (Gottlieb Hansen et al, 2011). Around 20,000 people receive prescription medicine for their alcohol problem, and an unknown number of people receive other treatment from their GP (The Danish Health Authority and Statens Serum Institut, 2015)

Methods

Results

Conclusion